Authenticity in biology education: benefits and challenges

This special issue of the Journal of Biological Education is devoted to selected papers from the European Research in the Didactic of Biology (ERIDOB) conference held in Braga, Portugal, in July 2010. The theme of the ERIDOB 2010 conference was Authenticity in biology education: benefits and challenges. This theme emerged from discussions that had taken place at the ERIDOB 2008 conference in Utrecht, The Netherlands. During those discussions, it had become apparent that various ERIDOB members related differently to the meaning of the term authenticity. Some believed that activities that are performed outside the classroom are authentic, while others thought that authentic activities should engage students in posing questions and designing their own paths to solve them. In this short editorial, we attempt to frame authenticity within the current literature, and to point out how the papers that were selected for this special issue contribute to our current understanding of authenticity in biology education.